


Set You Free

by thecivilunrest



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Danny deserves to know, M/M, Werewolf Reveal, everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-02
Updated: 2013-08-02
Packaged: 2017-12-22 04:37:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/909000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecivilunrest/pseuds/thecivilunrest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny, Ethan, and the truth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Set You Free

**Author's Note:**

> So this is probably going to be AU in .05 seconds but I don't even care. I just want Danny to know.

Danny doesn’t go find Ethan the way he said he would if anything happened. Instead Danny finds his family and rides home with them. His phone is vibrating in his pocket, and it keeps vibrating and vibrating and vibrating until finally Danny just shuts it off without looking at any of the messages. 

He knows who they’re from, but he doesn’t care. 

A woman died tonight, and he watched her die right in front of him. The piano string had gotten cut loose and found its way around the sub’s neck. Her blood had shined in the bright stage lights, and she’d had mistletoe in her system, the same stuff that he had thrown up only a couple of weeks ago.

The twins cry silently all the way home, their little fingers clutching at each other over the space between their car seats, because they saw it too. Mom and Dad don’t say anything until they get home, and even then it’s only mom. 

“Are you...all right?” she asks. She smooths her hand in his hair, the way Ethan had before the concert, and the movement makes something in his chest hurt. 

“I’m fine,” he lies, and he understands in that moment why people do it, how you can rationalize lying as the right thing to do. It still sucks. 

.

His mom calls him downstairs at noon the next day, and Ethan’s standing at the bottom of the stairs. It’s almost enough to make Danny want to turn around, but his mom is smiling at him and he forces himself all the way to the bottom. He forces himself to look at Ethan, like everything is normal, and the relief on his face is like a punch to the gut. . 

“Just make sure to keep the door open, you two,” she tells them with a light grin on her face. She loves Ethan, and so does his dad, and so do the twins. He’s the first boy that Danny’s ever brought home that they actually like, and Danny loved that. Now it just makes him sick to his stomach. 

“Why didn’t you answer my texts or calls? I was worried.” Ethan asks, after Danny closes the door despite what his mom said. He has to do this in private, he can’t have someone in his family listening to this. He can see the why didn’t you come to me in the rest of Ethan’s face, but Danny definitely doesn’t want to answer that question. 

Ethan tries to reach out, to grab Danny’s hand, but Danny moves away instinctively. He can’t let Ethan touch him right now, because if he does then he’ll never be able to do it. 

“My phone died,” he tells Ethan. It’s clear that Ethan doesn’t believe him, that he’s about to say something, but Danny cuts him off. “Yeah, it sucks when someone lies to you when you know that they’re lying. Doesn’t it?”

Ethan opens his mouth to say something, but then he closes it. Danny doesn’t know if it’s a relief not to listen to the excuses, or if it’s scary not wanting to believe them anymore. “It’s better if you don’t know,” he says finally, and there’s a part of Danny that hates him in that moment. 

“Why’s it better if I don’t know? How is any of this better? I know something’s up with you and your brother, and McCall and Stilinski. And I know it had something to do with Jackson moving to London too. I’m not an idiot, not like you all seem to think.”

“It’s better if you don’t know because you could fucking die, Danny. Is that what you want to know, that you’re weak and fragile and that you knowing more than you do know will be like a death sentence-”

“Well don’t worry about it anymore,” Danny says, cutting Ethan off. “I’m not your problem anymore. We’re done. I don’t want you around here anymore, and don’t even bother trying to talk to me. Unless you’re going to tell me the truth. And we both know you aren’t. So get out.”

For the first time, Ethan doesn’t look like a normal seventeen-year-old, the thing he always claimed to be. He looks older, different, like he has the weight of a thousand memories and secrets on his shoulders. For the first time, Ethan looks vulnerable. 

For the first time, Danny can’t find it in himself to care. 

.

Lydia knows something about what’s going on. He can tell she knows, because between last spring and the beginning of school, she no longer as a wild look in her eye. 

He asks her to study Physics with him. He’s not as smart as Lydia--not by a longshot--but he’s still just as good as her in science, which he knows that she appreciates. When she was dating Jackson they would study together, so it’s really not that weird of a request.

Jackson would come too, sometimes, but most of the time he got fed up with them when they tried to explain the concepts that he didn’t get. He would never have admitted that grades didn’t come as easily to him as it did to Danny and Lydia, even though Lydia would dumb herself down whenever Jackson was around. 

More often than not it had been the three of them, though, and Danny had liked that. But now Jackson was in London and Lydia was swept up in what felt like another world. She spent more time with Allison now, with Stilinski and McCall, and Danny had no one other than the occasional band kid, and Ethan until he wasn’t an option anymore.   
Lydia drives to his place after school, smiles at the twins, and walks up to his room. “This isn’t about vectors, is it?” she asks, setting up her spiral notebook and taking out her notes like they’re actually going to be used. 

“I want to know what’s going on,” Danny tells her.

“Of course you do,” she says, getting out her pencil before looking him straight in the eye. “But I can’t be the one to tell you. Or at least, I can’t tell you yet.”

“So you’d be willing to tell me?”

“I know what it’s like to be kept in the dark, to keep seeing things but not have an explanations. But it’s really not my secret to tell.” 

“Just tell me--is it drugs or gangs?” The question sounds stupid--so stupid--but he can’t imagine it being anything but that. Sometimes the way that Ethan had looked at McCall brought West Side Story (his mom’s musical of choice, thank you very much) to his mind.

Lydia smiles at that, slightly mocking. “I wish it was that easy,” she tells him, before settling into his desk chair and pulling out her physics textbook. This conversation is over. 

.

Danny and Jackson try to Skype at least once a week. Sometimes they can’t manage it--if Danny has overnight cross country meets or his parents are out and his boyfriend can come over, or if Jackson has something to do with one of his British friends--but they at least try. 

“There’s been some weird stuff going on over here lately,” Danny tells Jackson, mostly to see his reaction. “You should come back.” He’s only half joking, which is the sad part. 

Jackson’s face freezes for a second, before reacting, like he’s just remembered that he he put an entire ocean between him and a small town in northern California. Then he snorts. “There’s always weird shit going on in Beacon Hills. That’s why you need to get the hell out of there as soon as you graduate.” 

Suddenly Danny remembers last spring, how Jackson had told him “If you see me running towards you, run the other way. As fast as you can.” It had been so weird at the time, but made sense now, somehow. 

The day before he broke up with Ethan, how Ethan had told him “If anything happens, find me. Find me first.” His best friend had told him to run away, but Ethan had given him someone to run to if anything weird happened. 

Of course, now Danny doesn’t have anyone to run to, and he has no way to prepare himself. He can feel it, the whole town is on a precipice now. Either they fall or they get pulled back from the edge, and he hates how he can’t prepare himself for either outcome. 

Jackson knows something, maybe he’s a part of it, but he won’t tell Danny anything either. And it’s bullshit--such bullshit. Whoever said ignorance is bliss was a liar and Danny hates them, hates this whole situation with a passion. 

“If you knew anything about this, you’d tell me, right?” Danny asks Jackson. 

“What do you think? Duh,” his best friend lies straight to his face, and the fact that it’s through a computer screen doesn’t lessen the sting. 

.

At the beginning of the year Danny had thought that slipping in the seat next to Ethan every day was a great idea, but now he wants to get Jackson to buy him a time machine and tell himself that this was the worst idea in the world. 

Everyone has their usual seats by now, so Danny has no choice but sit next to him. He hasn’t told anyone about the break-up, so when Ms. Morrell puts them in groups of two to conjugate French verbs, everyone pairs up, leaving them no one but each other. 

Ethan opens the French textbook wordlessly before chancing a glance up at Danny, who can’t seem to stop looking at him. Sometimes he finds himself composing a text to Ethan without thinking about it, or looking to see if Ethan’s behind his locker, waiting for him to notice like he always had. 

The good thing about dating older guys is that Danny never had to see them again after they broke up. But sitting here, looking at Ethan when he knows that he still cares about him, possibly loves him, it hurts. 

“So you can go first, you were always better at this than I was,” Danny says. The first few times they had “study” dates they had been so unsure that they had actually studied, and Ethan was great at French and English. Those had eventually turned into shirtless make-out sessions, thank God. 

Ethan stares at him, like he’s thinking the same thing as Danny, before he blinks and looks down at the book. “Look...if I told you that there was a way that I could tell you about everything, would you do it?” he asks, instead of conjugating the verb to change. 

“Why can’t you just tell me? Why can’t you just trust me?” 

“I trust you, more than anyone at this school, but-” Ethan cuts himself off here, looking pained. 

“This is such crap,” Danny says. “Such utter crap. You don’t think I know something went weird with best friend last spring, or that McCall and Stilinski are totally in the middle of whatever’s going on? And that you’re in on it too?” 

“En français,” Ms. Morrell tells them as she walks by. She gives Ethan a lingering look--one that Danny might not have even noticed if he wasn’t always looking for clues now, noticing things that other people didn’t, even if he could never put all of the pieces together. 

“Don’t tell me she knows too,” Danny says quietly, and Ethan just presses his lips together and looks at the book in front of him. 

.

Thankfully the very next day is Under 21 Day at the Jungle, and Danny takes an hour to get ready before heading over there. He hasn’t felt like going clubbing since he met Ethan, and they never once went there together. 

Danny goes straight for the bar, because he doesn’t really feel like dancing. “Danny!” Dave, the bartender, calls. “Long time no see. Why’s that?”

“Met someone,” he admits, and Dave’s eyebrows meet his hairline. 

“Oh, really? That bad, huh?” When Danny doesn’t answer, Dave just shakes his head. “Don’t worry, kid. This one’s on me,” he says, and fixes Danny a Pepsi and slides it to him. Danny nods and turns away from the bar, because he doesn’t feel like talking about Ethan. 

He just wants to have fun and forget that he had a boyfriend who lied to him. At least they never told each other that they loved each other--even though Danny had been sure that they almost had, that they were almost there. 

The Pepsi is gone in two gulps, and then Danny makes his way to the dancefloor. It doesn’t take long for him to remember why he likes coming here when he’s not with anyone. Dancing is fun, grinding on people is fun, people are fun. 

When a guy starts dancing with him exclusively, when he bends down and whispers in Danny’s ear, asking him if he wants to go somewhere a little more private, Danny goes. He flirts and kisses this guy and pretends not to know why it doesn’t work out. And if this guy looks a little like Ethan, especially in the fact that he’s a little more muscular than the kind of guy that Danny usually likes, well, he pretends not to know why. 

.  
The air is brisk by the time that Danny decides to go home, cold even for northern California. He didn’t bring a jacket so he almost runs to the minivan, and he doesn’t think about how if Ethan was here he’d probably make Danny put on his jacket. 

He was so fussy sometimes, making sure that Danny was alright, and he’d loved that Ethan had cared that much. Now, though, the thought makes him feel hollow and even colder. He just forces himself to deal with it, and is almost to the minivan when he hears something snarl, and something human sounding reply. 

It’s a bad idea to go over there, and he knows that, but either it’s just a feral cat attacking someone, or it’s the answer to every question that he’s asked for the past week. But once Danny finally gets to the other side of the parking lot, the cold forgotten, there’s nothing there. 

Nothing, that is, except Ethan and Aiden. 

They’re both bloody, especially on their faces, but they aren’t even wincing in pain. Danny’s never been into the type that’s bloody more often than not, but that’s the thing about Ethan: he manages to subvert every type that Danny’s ever had. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” Ethan asks, glancing at his brother. 

“I could ask you the same thing.”

But Ethan doesn’t even seem to hear him. Instead he’s staring at Danny like he hardly recognizes him. Aiden takes a deep breath through his nose and elbows Ethan, who turns to his brother, fists clenched. 

Danny watches the two of them interact and knows that whatever Ethan’s in on, they’re in on it together. 

“Go home, Danny,” Aiden says, grinning. His teeth gleam in the dim street lights,“Before you get hurt.” 

“You drove here, right? I’ll walk you to your car,” Ethan says, ignoring his brother. 

Danny wants to say no, that he is perfectly capable walking himself to the car, but he wants to talk to Ethan more. It’s a sad turn of events, really. “So you had fun tonight?” Ethan asks stiffly, something angry in his tone. Danny raises an eyebrow, and Ethan gestures to his neck. “The hickey kind of gave it away.” 

“Oh,” he says, reaching up and touching the spot where the guy had evidently sucked a hickey. He hadn’t even noticed. “It would have been fun I guess, if it worked.”

“If what worked?”

“Forgetting about you,” Danny admits. They’ve reached the minivan, and now they’re just staring at each other. 

“Danny,” Ethan breathes, taking a step towards him, but Danny backs up. 

“Don’t,” he says. “Just...don’t. You constantly lie to me and I don’t need that in my life. So just...don’t.” 

When Danny looks in his rearview mirror Ethan is gone, and he pretends that it’s just like he wanted. 

.

Every time that Stilinski talks to him, Danny knows that something’s up. This time is no exception. “So, Danny,” he begins, and Danny turns to walk away, “can I ask you a favor?”

“No,” Danny tells him, and starts walking. Stilinski is annoying and exhausting, period. It didn’t help that he and Jackson had somehow had a blood feud, and that Stilinski seemed to go out of his way to be one hyperactive annoyance to them both. 

“But, really, we need your help and you’re the only one around that can do this kind of thing.”

“You’re not even trying to sell it, are you?”

“What if I told you that it was life or death?” Stiles asks suddenly. “This is that important, I swear.” 

“I’ll help you, if you tell me what’s going on. Everything that’s going on.” 

That was probably the one thing that could make Danny do what Stiles wanted. Hating himself, he turns around. “What is it that you want me to do?”

.

Stilinski takes him to an extremely sketchy part of town right after school. “This feels like the beginning of a bad horror movie.”

“Oh, you have no idea buddy,” Stiles says, gripping the steering wheel of his jeep even harder. There’s a nervous edge to him now, like the closer they get to wherever they’re going the antsier he gets. 

“So what do you need me to do?” Danny asks when they finally stop in front of an apartment building. It’s not in one of the better places in town, but at least it’s not a haunted house. 

“We need you to connect all of us to a server, the hot spot being here.” 

“Easy enough,” Danny tells him. “Do you have everything that I’ll need?”

“Duh,” Stiles says. “And then I’ll tell you everything.” 

.

In the end, Stiles doesn’t have to tell him a thing. In the middle of connecting the router, the light stuck on the side of the wall goes off, bringing Stiles’s cousin Miguel and a girl who looked enough like him to be his sister with it. 

“Ah hell,” Stiles says under his breath. He puts down the wires he was fiddling with and from there all hell breaks loose. 

Miguel and his sister grow facial hair and claws and fangs. So that’s what it’s been this whole time. Werewolves. He feels stupid for not realizing this, for not even considering the possibility. 

“Don’t freak out, Danny,” Stiles commands him, like Danny didn’t see someone’s throat get slashed right in front of him. 

“I’m fine,” Danny says, which is of course when Ethan and Aiden come in, followed by a tall woman that he’s never seen before. They have claws and fangs too and duh. 

“Danny, what are you doing here?”

“Worry about your boy toy later,” the woman tells Ethan, glaring at him. Before she attacks Derek. 

“We’ve gotta get out of here,” Stiles tells him. When the twins are preoccupied, they slip through the door and out onto the street. 

“So was that what you were going to tell me?”

“Yeah, werewolves exist, and so does everything else out of your freaking nightmares. Normally I’d stay for longer than that but you were my first priority and we had to get out of there pronto.” 

“That was pretty much the lamest revel ever,” Danny says, looking out the window at all of the downton rushing by. 

“You’re telling me,” Stiles agrees. “So you know the drill, right? Don’t tell anyone, they won’t believe you anyway, etc etc. Got it?”

“Got it,” Danny says.

.

He finds Ethan and Aiden at the parking lot before school. Ethan gives his brother a look and Aiden goes, looking amused. 

“So,” Danny starts, since Ethan doesn’t seem to know where to begin. “Were you ever going to tell me about any of this?”

“I wanted to, but I couldn’t. Things are...more complicated for me and my brother.”

“Why, because you’re part of an evil alpha pack who keeps killing people?” Stiles had filled him in. 

“I’ve killed people before, Danny. I’m not a good person.” 

“I’m starting to get that, yeah,” Danny says. “So, was this real? Were we real or was it all a part of your pack’s plan to infiltrate everything?” 

“At first,” Ethan admits. “At first you were just a test. But now it’s real. We’re real.” 

Danny can read people now, and even if Ethan is a werewolf, he’s still a person at heart. He’s telling the truth. They’re real. 

There’s a warmth in his chest at the thought. 

“So,” Danny says. “Werewolves are a thing, and my boyfriend is one.”

“Yeah,” Ethan admits. “He is.”


End file.
